When Coinneach found the human who had fought his way in, his men in tow, the intruder was pulling his sword from the chest of one of his subordinates.
And at his feet lay corpses scattered across the ground.
Clearly, before he arrived, his men had tried to surround and kill this outrageously brazen human.
Unfortunately, they had all failed.
Looking at those young faces, their eyes still open in death, the elves accompanying Coinneach felt anger rising within them.
Only Coinneach noticed the intruder's unusual appearance.
"You... no!" Coinneach stared at Lynn's feline eyes. "You're not human. You're a witcher?"
In this day and age, witchers were exceedingly rare.
Apart from the School of the Wolf, which could still maintain its witcher lineage, the other schools had even lost their strongholds.
So much so that some people in this world believed witchers were merely inventions of bedtime stories.
But clearly, Coinneach had heard of witchers' deeds.
"What's going on? Don't witchers strictly observe neutrality? Have even you broken your oaths now?"
"You attacked that caravan, and I'm one of its guards. Witchers don't initiate attacks on sapient races, but you left me no choice."
Lynn did not approve of humanity's persecution of the elves.
But in Lynn's eyes, these Scoia'tael-or, to use their current name, the "Children of Freedom"-were hardly any better.
Their hands were likewise covered in innocent blood.
Since none of them were any good, they ought to stop constantly presenting themselves as champions of justice.
Coinneach spat on the ground.
"I knew it. Your so-called code of neutrality is just a sham. In the end, you mutants will still side with the humans."
Lynn shook his head.
"Wrong. I simply don't want to side with the aggressors. Besides, what do you expect me to do? Stand by and watch you slit innocent people's throats?"
"Do you even know that you're attacking a merchant caravan? They're not even an Aedirnian caravan. They're from Kovir. The people of Kovir have never persecuted your kin."
This was true.
Because Kovir lay in the northwestern corner of the known world, few members of the ancient races lived in Kovir and Poviss.
That was not because the locals had slaughtered them to the brink of extinction, but because Kovir and Poviss were simply too cold.
Neither dwarves nor elves could stand such a bitterly cold climate.
However, the other side clearly did not accept Lynn's argument.
An elf beside Coinneach roared angrily.
"But humans killed my family!"
Lynn raised his voice as well, roaring back, "Then take revenge on the murderers who killed your family! Instead of barking here like a rabid stray dog!"
The elven commander stopped his subordinate from continuing the shouting match. He looked at the witcher and sighed.
"It seems we'll never see eye to eye, witcher. If you must blame anything, blame your choice of sides."
"Kill him."
The elves beside Coinneach drew their weapons and charged at Lynn.
But faster than any of them came an arrow fired from behind Lynn.
While Lynn and Coinneach were talking, an elf had seized the opportunity to quietly climb the large tree behind Lynn and hide against its trunk.
And when Coinneach gave the order to attack, he aimed at Lynn's back and loosed an arrow.
An ordinary person's attention would surely have been drawn to the elves charging at him.
How could he possibly have any attention left to guard against an arrow from behind?
But what the elf did not know was that witchers did not wear their school medallions merely for decoration. They warned witchers of attacks from behind and from the sides.
The archer had barely released the bowstring when Lynn felt his medallion vibrate and instinctively darted sideways. With the Blizzard Potion's effect still lingering for a little while longer, Lynn reacted swiftly, reaching out to catch the arrow he had dodged.
Then he turned and whipped his arm.
The arrow flew back faster than it had come.
A scream rang out.
The archer fell from the tree, his arrow-struck head hitting the ground first. His neck gave a sharp crack, leaving his head at a gruesomely unnatural angle to it.
Clearly, he could not have survived.
Their companion's gruesome death did not distract the elves charging from the front for even a second. Their attention remained entirely on Lynn.
They moved in unison, maintaining their formation.
Their weapons swung from different angles.
No one could block attacks from five directions at once.
Indeed, no one could.
But Lynn did not need to.
He raised his hand.
A serpent of fire formed by the Igni Sign shot toward the faces of the three elves in the middle.
Then he jumped back, avoiding the remaining two swinging swords.
Then...
After two flashes of cold steel, Lynn walked toward the three elves who were clutching their burned faces and screaming...
But before he could execute the three wounded elves, a double-bladed sword became a fierce whirlwind, biting toward his neck.
Lynn had to abandon his finishing strike and leap back.
Then the weapons in both their hands became flashes of cold light as they slashed at one another.
Clang!
The double-bladed sword and steel sword collided heavily.
Bright sparks flew.
Coinneach gripped his double-bladed sword with both hands. The weapon seemed an extension of his limbs, letting him effortlessly whirl it into a cyclone of unrelenting attacks.
Clang, clang, clang, clang!
A succession of ringing blows sounded, sparks raining down from the clashing blades.
Once the Blizzard Potion's effects wore off, the two were actually evenly matched.
That was only natural.
After all, as a race whose lifespan far exceeded that of humans, elves had ample time and energy to hone their martial skills carefully and meticulously.
And Coinneach's advantages did not end there.
Lynn had already expended a considerable amount of stamina in the earlier fighting.
Coinneach, meanwhile, had not fought at all before this.
Clang!
Realizing this, Lynn parried the descending blade but did not seize the opportunity to counterattack. Instead, he jumped back and began forming a sign with one hand.
But Coinneach gave Lynn no chance to form his sign. He leaped up, his entire body and double-bladed sword turning into a whirlwind that came howling down from above.
The surging wind from his blade made Lynn look as though he had no choice but to abandon his sign and dodge aside to avoid the attack's force.
The ground was sliced to pieces by the fierce gusts from the sword, crisscrossed with gouges.
And it was not over yet.
Coinneach ducked down, changing the direction of his double-bladed sword to attack Lynn's lower body from below.
Lynn kept retreating, then seized the right moment to step onto the double-bladed sword's blade.
Coinneach instinctively sensed that something was wrong.
By the time that thought occurred to him, Lynn's sword was already sweeping swiftly across his chest.
With no time to react otherwise, Coinneach instinctively released his double-bladed sword and retreated to dodge.
"Commander!"
One of the elves whose face had been burned could no longer see, but he still hurled his longsword toward the sounds of combat.
Whether the elven gods really were watching over them or not, the throw was surprisingly accurate.
It flew straight toward Coinneach.
But just as Coinneach caught the flying longsword, Lynn attacked again.
This time, it was Lynn's turn to launch a ferocious offensive.
The afterimages left by the slashes of Master-Level School of the Wolf Swordsmanship came wave after wave.
The shrill whistles of blades tearing through the air merged into one continuous sound.
Under Lynn's sudden onslaught, Coinneach was unwilling to adopt an approach that would leave them both wounded, so he focused on defending, retreating as he fought.
On the surface, he appeared to be overwhelmed by the witcher, but in truth, the two remained evenly matched.
He knew very well that attacks like Lynn's consumed a tremendous amount of stamina, even for a witcher.
In Coinneach's eyes, someone who had already expended too much stamina in the previous fighting choosing such a fighting style was simply out of his mind.
Until Coinneach, retreating as he fought, reached the very spot where Lynn's sign had just been "interrupted."
Purple light suddenly flared from the ground, enveloping Coinneach.
His body felt as though it had sunk into a mire, and his parries suddenly slowed.
And this was precisely the effect of the Master-Level Yrden Trap.